‘My steward is a native of Umuaro,’ continued Winterbottom, ‘and has just come back after spending two days at home; and he tells me that the whole village was in confusion because a rather important man had been whipped by Wright. But perhaps there’s nothing in it.’
Clarke hoped he did not betray his confusion. Anyhow he rallied quickly and said: ‘I heard nothing of it on the spot.’ The words on the spot stung Winterbottom like three wasps. The fellow’s cheek! He had been there barely a week and already he was talking as though he owned the district and Winterbottom was the new boy, or some desk-ridden idiot at Headquarters. On the spot indeed! But he chose not to press the matter. He was immersed in his plans for appointing two new Paramount Chiefs in the division and throughout dinner he spoke of nothing else. Clarke was surprised that he no longer spoke with strong feeling. As he watched him across the table he seemed too tired and old. But even that soon passed and a hint of enthusiasm returned to his voice.
‘I think I told you the story of the fetish priest who impressed me most favourably by speaking the truth in the land case between these people here and Umuaro.
‘Yes, I think you did.’ Clarke was nervously watching his guest in difficulty with a piece of chicken. These damned native birds!
‘Well, I have now decided to appoint him Paramount Chief for Umuaro. I’ve gone through the records of the case again and found that the man’s title is Eze Ulu. The prefix eze in Ibo means king. So the man is a kind of priest-king.’
‘That means, I suppose,’ said Clarke, ‘that the new appointment would not altogether be strange to him.’
‘Exactly. Although I must say that I have never found the Ibo man backward in acquiring new airs of authority. Take this libertine we made Chief here. He now calls himself His Highness Obi Ikedi the First of Okperi. The only title I haven’t yet heard him use is Fidei Defensor.’
Clarke opened his mouth to say that the love of title was a universal human failing but thought better of it.
‘The man was a complete nonentity until we crowned him, and now he carries on as though he had been nothing else all his life. It’s the same with Court Clerks and even messengers. They all manage to turn themselves into little tyrants over their own people. It seems to be a trait in the character of the negro.’
The steward in shining white moved out of the darkness of the kitchen balancing the rest of the boiled potatoes and cauliflower on one hand and the chicken on the other. His heavily starched uniform crackled as he walked over and stood silently on Captain Winterbottom’s right.
‘Go over to the other side, Stephen,’ said Clarke irritably. Stephen grinned and moved over.
‘No. I won’t have another,’ said Winterbottom, and turning to Clarke he added: ‘This is very good; one is not usually so lucky with the first cook he gets.’
‘Aloysius is not first rate, but I suppose… No, I won’t have any more, Stephen.’
As they ate fresh fruit salad made from pawpaw, banana and oranges Winterbottom returned to his Paramount Chiefs.
‘So as far as Umuaro is concerned I have found their Chief,’ he said with one of his rare smiles, ‘and they will live happily ever after. I am not so optimistic about Abame who are a pretty wild set anyhow.’
‘They are the people who murdered Macdonald?’ asked Clarke, half of whose mind was on the salad that had gone a little sour.
‘That’s right. Actually they’re no longer very troublesome – not to us anyhow; the punitive expedition taught them a pretty unforgettable lesson. But they are still very unco-operative. In the whole division they are the least co-operative with their Native Court. Throughout last year the court handled less than a dozen cases and not one was brought to it by the natives themselves.’
‘That’s pretty grim,’ said Clarke without being sure whether he meant it to be ironical or not. But as Winterbottom began to fill in the details of his plans for the two Native Court Areas Clarke could not help being impressed by a new aspect of the man’s character. Having been overruled in his opposition to Paramount Chiefs he was now sparing no effort to ensure the success of the policy. Clarke’s tutor in Morals at Cambridge had been fond of the phrase crystallization of civilization. This was it.
Over their after-coffee whisky and soda Captain Winterbottom’s opposition reared its head momentarily. But that only confirmed Clarke’s new opinion of him.
‘What I find so heart-rending,’ said Winterbottom, ‘is not so much the wrong policies of our Administration as our lack of consistency. Take this question of Paramount Chiefs. When Sir Hugh Macdermot first arrived as Governor he sent his Secretary for Native Affairs to investigate the whole business. The fellow came over here and spent a long time discovering the absurdities of the system which I had pointed out all along. Anyhow, from what he said in private conversation it was clear that he agreed with us that it had been an unqualified disaster. That was in 1919. I remember I had just come back from leave…’ Some strange emotion entered his voice and Clarke saw a rush of blood to his face. He mastered himself and continued: ‘More than two years and we still have heard nothing about the man’s report. On the contrary the Lieutenant-Governor now asks us to proceed with the previous policy. Where does anyone stand?’
‘It is very frustrating,’ said Clarke. ‘You know I was thinking the other day about our love of Commissions of Inquiry. That seems to me to be the real difference between us and the French. They know what they want and do it. We set up a commission to discover all the facts, as though facts meant anything. We imagine that the more facts we can obtain about our Africans the easier it will be to rule them. But facts…’
‘Facts are important,’ cut in Winterbottom, ‘and Commissions of Inquiry could be useful. The fault of our Administration is that they invariably appoint the wrong people and set aside the advice of those of us who have been here for years.’
Clarke felt impotent anger with the man for not letting him finish, and personal inadequacy for not having made the point as beautifully as he had first made it to himself.
Chapter Eleven
The first time Ezeulu left his compound after the Pumpkin Festival was to visit his friend, Akuebue. He found him sitting on the floor of his obi preparing seed-yams which he had hired labourers to plant for him next morning. He sat with a short, wooden-headed knife between two heaps of yams. The bigger heap lay to his right on the bare floor. The smaller pile was in a long basket from which he took out one yam at a time, looked at it closely, trimmed it with his knife and put it in the big heap. The refuse lay directly in front of him, between the heaps – large numbers of brown, circular yam-skins chipped off the tail of each seed-yam, and grey, premature tendrils trimmed off the heads.
The two men shook hands and Ezeulu took his rolled goatskin from under his arm, spread it on the floor and sat down. Akuebue asked him about his family and for a while continued to work on his yams.
‘They are well,’ replied Ezeulu. ‘And the people of your compound?’
‘They are quiet.’
‘Those are very large and healthy seed-yams. Do they come from your own barn or from the market?’
‘Do you not know that my portion of the Anietiti land…? Yes. They were harvested there.’
‘It is a great land,’ said Ezeulu, nodding his head a few times. ‘Such a land makes lazy people look like master farmers.’
Akuebue smiled. ‘You want to draw me out, but you won’t.’ He put down the knife and raised his voice to call his son, Obielue, who answered from the inner compound and soon came in, sweating.
‘Ezeulu!’ he saluted.
‘My son.’
He turned to his father to take his message.
‘Tell your mother that Ezeulu is greeting her. If she has kolanut let her bring it.’ Obielue returned to the inner compound.
‘Although I ate no kolanut the last time I went to the house of my friend.’ Akuebue said this as though he talked to himself.
Ezeulu laughed. ‘What do w
e say happens to the man who eats and then makes his mouth as if it has never seen food?’
‘How should I know?’
‘It makes his anus dry up. Did your mother not tell you that?’
Akuebue rose to his feet very slowly because of the pain in his waist.
‘Old age is a disease,’ he said, struggling to unbend himself with one hand on the hip. When he was three-quarters erect he gave up. ‘Whenever I sit for any length of time I have to practise again to walk, like an infant.’ He smiled as he toddled to the low entrance wall of his obi, took from it a wooden bowl with a lump of chalk in it and offered it to his guest. Ezeulu picked up the chalk and drew five lines with it on the floor – three uprights, a flat one across the top and another below them. Then he painted one of his big toes and dubbed a thin coat of white around his left eye.
Only one of Akuebue’s two wives was at home and she soon came into the obi to salute Ezeulu and to say that the senior wife had gone to inspect her palm trees for ripe fruit. Obielue returned with a kolanut. He took the wooden bowl from his father, blew into it to remove dust and offered the kolanut in it to Ezeulu.
‘Thank you,’ said Ezeulu. ‘Take it to your father to break.’
‘No,’ said Akuebue. ‘I ask you to break it.’
‘That cannot be. We do not by-pass a man and enter his compound.’
‘I know that,’ said Akuebue, ‘but you see that my hands are full and I am asking you to perform the office for me.’
‘A man cannot be too busy to break the first kolanut of the day in his own house. So put the yam down; it will not run away.’
‘But this is not the first kolanut of the day. I have broken several already.’
‘That may be so, but you did not break them in my presence. The time a man wakes up is his morning.’
‘All right,’ said Akuebue. ‘I shall break it if you say so.’
‘Indeed I say so. We do not apply an ear-pick to the eye.’
Akuebue took the kolanut in his hand and said: ‘We shall both live,’ and broke it.
Two gunshots had sounded in the neighbourhood since Ezeulu came in. Now a third went off.
‘What is happening there?’ he asked. ‘Are men leaving the forest now to hunt in the compounds?’
‘Oh. You have not heard? Ogbuefi Amalu is very sick.’
‘True? And it has reached the point of shooting guns?’
‘Yes.’ Akuebue lowered his voice out of respect for the bad story. ‘What day was yesterday?’
‘Eke,’ replied Ezeulu.
‘Yes, it was on the other Eke that it happened. He was returning home from the farmland he had gone to clear when it struck him down. Before he reached home he was trembling with cold in the noonday heat. He could no longer hold his matchet because his fingers were set like crooks.’
‘What do they say it is?’
‘From what I saw this morning and yesterday I think it is aru-mmo.’
‘Please do not repeat it.’
‘But I am not telling you that Nwokonkwo or Nwokafo told me. This is what I saw with my own eyes.’
Ezeulu began to gnash his teeth.
‘I went to see him this morning. His breath seemed to be scraping his sides with a blunt razor.’
‘Who have they hired to make medicine for him?’ asked Ezeulu.
‘A man called Nwodika from Umuofia. I told them this morning that had I been there when they took the decision I would have told them to go straight to Aninta. There is a doctor there who nips off sickness between his thumb and finger.’
‘But if it is the sickness of the Spirits, as you say, there is no medicine for it – except camwood and fire.’
‘That is so,’ said Akuebue, ‘but we cannot put our hands between our laps and watch a sick man for twelve days. We must grope about until what must happen does happen. That is why I spoke of this medicine-man from Aninta.’
‘I think you speak of Aghadike whom they call Anyanafummo.’
‘You know him. That is the very man.’
‘I know many people throughout Olu and Igbo. Aghadike is a great doctor and diviner. But even he cannot carry a battle to the compound of the great god.’
‘No man can do that.’
The gun sounded again.
‘This gun-shooting is no more than a foolish groping about,’ said Ezeulu. ‘How can we frighten Spirits away with the noise of a gun? If it were so easy any man who had enough money to buy a keg of gunpowder would live and live until mushrooms sprouted from his head. If I am sick and they bring me a medicine-man who knows more about hunting than herbs I shall send him away and look for another.’
The two men sat for a little while in silence. Then Akuebue said:
‘From what I saw this morning we may hear something before another dawn.’
Ezeulu moved his head up and down many times. ‘It is a story of great sorrow, but we cannot set fire to the world.’
Akuebue who had stopped working on his yams went back to them now with the proverbial excuse that greeting in the cold harmattan is taken from the fireside.
‘That is what our people say,’ replied Ezeulu. ‘And they also say that a man who visits a craftsman at work finds a sullen host.’
The gun sounded yet again. It seemed to make Ezeulu irritable.
‘I shall go over and tell the man that if he has no medicine to give to the sick man he should at least spare the gunpowder they will use for his funeral.’
‘Perhaps he thinks that gunpowder is as cheap as wood ash,’ said Akuebue, and then more seriously: ‘If you go there on your way home say nothing that might make them think you wish their kinsman evil. They may say: What is gunpowder to a man’s life?’
Ezeulu did not need two looks at the sick man to see that he could not pass the twelve days which the Spirits gave a man stricken with this disease. If, as Akuebue had said, nothing was heard by tomorrow it would be a thing to tell.
The man’s trunk was encased in a thick coat of camwood ointment which had caked and cracked in countless places. A big log fire burned beside the bamboo bed on which he lay and a strong whiff of burning herbs was in the air. His breathing was like the splitting of hard wood. He did not recognize Ezeulu who on entering had greeted those in the room with his eyes alone and made straight for the bedside where he stood for a long time looking down on the sick man in silence. After that he went and sat down with the small crowd of relations talking in very low voices,
‘What has a man done to merit this?’ he asked.
‘That is what we all have been asking,’ replied one of the men. ‘We were not told to expect it. We woke up one morning to find our shinbone deformed.’
The herbalist sat a little apart from the group, and took no part in the conversation. Ezeulu looked around the room and saw how the man had fortified it against the entry of the Spirits. From the roof hung down three long gourds corked with wads of dry banana leaf. A fourth gourd was the big-bellied type which was often used for carrying palm wine. It hung directly over the sick man. On its neck was a string of cowries, and a bunch of parrots’ feathers danced inside it with only their upper half showing. It looked as if something boiled about their feet forcing them to gyrate around the mouth of the gourd. Two freshly sacrificed chicks dangled head downwards on either side of it.
The sick man who had been silent except for his breathing began quite suddenly to groan. Everyone stopped talking. The medicine-man, a ring of white chalk dubbed round one eye and a large leather-covered amulet on his left wrist, rose up and went outside. His flint-gun lay at the threshold, its base on the ground and the barrel pointing into the hut. He picked it up and began to load. The gunpowder was contained in a four-cornered bottle which had once carried the white man’s hot drink called Nje-nje. When he had loaded the gun he went to the back of the house and let it off. All the cocks and hens in the neighbourhood immediately set up an alarm as if they had seen a wild animal.
When he returned to the hut he found the sick man
even more restless, saying meaningless things.
‘Bring me his ofo,’ he said.
The sick man’s brother took the short wooden staff from the house-shrine held by ropes to a rafter. The medicine-man who was now crouching by the bed took it from him and opening the sick man’s right hand put it there.
‘Hold it!’ he commanded pressing the dry fingers round the staff. ‘Grasp it, and say no to them! Do you hear me? Say no!’
The meaning of his command seemed at last to seep through many clogged filters to the sick man’s mind and the fingers began to close, like claws, slowly round the staff.
‘That’s right,’ said the medicine-man beginning to remove his own hand and to leave the ofo in Amalu’s grasp. ‘Say no to them!’
But as soon as he took his hand completely away Amalu’s fingers jerked open and the ofo fell down on the floor. The little crowd in the hut exchanged meaningful glances but no words.
Soon after Ezeulu rose to go. ‘Take good care of him,’ he said.
‘Go well,’ replied the others.
When Obika’s bride arrived with her people and he looked upon her again it surprised him greatly that he had been able to let her go untouched during her last visit. He knew that few other young men of his age would have shown the same restraint which ancient custom demanded. But what was right was right. Obika began to admire this new image of himself as an upholder of custom – like the lizard who fell down from the high iroko tree he felt entitled to praise himself if nobody else did.
The bride was accompanied by her mother who was just coming out of an illness, many girls of her own age and her mother’s women friends. Most of the women carried small head-loads of the bride’s dowry to which they had all contributed – cooking-pots, wooden bowls, brooms, mortar, pestle, baskets, mats, ladles, pots of palm oil, baskets of cocoyam, smoked fish, fermented cassava, locust beans, heads of salt and pepper. There were also two lengths of cloth, two plates and an iron pot. These last were products of the white man and had been bought at the new trading post at Okperi.